Thanks, Ian, for the distinction.

[Video][Website]
[5.91]

Ian Mathers: Oh right, it’s Armand van Helden who did this, which I thought was insanely entertaining when I was 17. No wonder this is so much more generically competent than I was expecting. Nice voice, shame about the lyrics etc.
[4]

Daniel Montesinos-Donaghy: Fiora’s voice — glazed-over, sounding like it’s been filtered through behind panes of glass — glides over a rip-off/sample of the “Aerodynamic” guitar break and standardized trance thump. Her vocals are additional gloss on a neo-candy landscape, buzzed-up but open to an appealing melancholia. “Stay all night / run away all night,” she repeats on the chorus, the vapidity of the words irrelevant, the tone quietly pleading for something beyond momentary joy. Van Buuren finds emotion in the assumed artificiality, the plasticity, the ephemeral. It’s a pleasant surprise.
[7]

Crystal Leww: I really dig pretty vocals on top of a nice electronic production. However, this kind of sounds like the exact opposite of that — Fiora’s beckoning towards her object of affection sounds completely drowned out by the sparkle and the twinkle of the rest of the track.
[4]

Brad Shoup: If I had a secret EDM career, I’d have to call myself Anonymous Bosh for at least one single, right? Major soft spot for airy club fare with tremulous female vocals. There’s a bit of filter house in the middle, but it doesn’t interfere. Perfect night-car nonsense.
[8]

Scott Mildenhall: Armin van Buuren must have made this song at least a thousand times before. Perhaps he’s sticking with it until euphoric trance becomes the preeminent subset of dance music once more, or maybe no one told him about Dave Pearce leaving Radio 1. Either way, it’s a good job, because “Waiting for the Night” is the mark of an expert craftsman and would easily sit well on a turn-of-the-millennium Ministry Of Sound Annual.
[7]

Iain Mew: The UK doesn’t care about Eurovision enough (or possibly doesn’t understand Eurovision enough) to get Calvin Harris in to try to imitate last year’s winner for the benefit of an under-appreciated singer. If we did, it would probably sound something like this.
[5]

Katherine St Asaph: Tissue-soft trance with a lens flare of a voice, and perfectly pretty and insubstantial until that chromatic breakdown Calvin Harris only killed mostly dead.
[6]

Jonathan Bogart: Maybe I’m just lulled by professionalism, or I’m in the kind of mood that responds to the slight vulnerability in Fiora’s voice, but generic as this is there’s also a kind of soulfulness to it that I’m responding to right now.
[7]

Jer Fairall: Lush, sweetly seductive and, I’d imagine, under the right circumstances a warmly complimentary soundtrack to any number of blissful intoxicants. The vocalist plays her part competently, yet her rather demure sense of restraint ends up skewing the whole thing a little too close to Delerium ft. Sarah McLachlan territory for the hedonism to feel as guiltless as this otherwise welcoming track seems to suggest.
[6]

Will Adams: Hits the proper marks for a good trance song – lovely vocals, plucky synth lead, and driving rhythms. However, the lyrics fumble, aiming for uplift in the verses but dipping into that familiar quest for “the night” in the chorus. If this score doesn’t seem justified, then my biases are showing through.
[7]

Patrick St. Michel: I keep waiting for this to morph into “Waiting For Tonight,” and keep being left disappointed.
[4]